


The Censored Fall

by imochan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 05:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation and an empty fridge. Originally written: 2006.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Censored Fall

**Author's Note:**

> For the incredibly talented and patient Rachel ♥, who wanted, and I quote, "remus/james, cheese". Hahahaha, I'm so sorry. I somehow imagine this follows _Runaways_ , in my head, but it certainly doesn't have to.

**Title:** The Censored Fall  
 **Author:** [](http://imochan.livejournal.com/profile)[**imochan**](http://imochan.livejournal.com/)  
 **Pairing:** Remus/James, Sirius/Remus  
 **Recipient:** [](http://one900.livejournal.com/profile)**one900**  
 **Rating:** PG-13ish  
 **Warnings:** Slash, bad language  
 **Summary:** A conversation and an empty fridge.  
 **Notes:** For the incredibly talented and patient Rachel ♥, who wanted, and I quote, "remus/james, cheese". Hahahaha, I'm so sorry. I somehow imagine this follows _Runaways_ , in my head, but it certainly doesn't have to.

  
"Look, would you just let me in?"

"No."

Remus has his palm pressed against the back of the door and the chain still in the lock, so all James can see of him is one eye, half of his long nose, and the shoulder of his pilled, grey jumper.

"For Christ's sake," says James.

"I'm cooking," says Remus. "I'm going to burn something, possibly the whole kitchen."

"I could just Apparate in," says James, pinching the bridge of his nose under his glasses.

"If you were a prick, of course you could."

" _Remus_ ," he says. It's February, it's freezing in the corridor, he's got no gloves and his boots are soaking, he's starving, and his mate is too fucking ticked off at him to even give him the pleasure of his _full_ face.

Remus's eye narrows, the visible half of his mouth wrinkles at the end: he's worrying his tongue between his teeth. James levels a look at him and presses his fingertips to the doorknob, gives it a little push. C'mon, it says. Come _on_ , this is miserable, ridiculous, this is you and your tiny, lonely flat decked out in Here We Come A-Wallowing.

"Why are you even here?" asks Remus, fingers curling around the edge of the latch. James can smell cooking bread and cheese from inside the flat.

"Because you were alone last month and I figured you needed the company," James snaps. "Tonight. Christ, have _you_ forgotten the calendar?"

Remus's mouth twitches; his shoulders tighten in the small space of the opening. "No," he says, finally, and unlocks the door.

James shucks his boots on the mat and closes the door behind himself; Remus retreats into the cramped corridor, and James watches his back dissolve into the ill-lit kitchen. He stands in the doorway, picks at a bit of flaking paint where his hand rests. The flat is cramped and mostly empty, but the light is good, cold London-evening light, fitted into the precise, neat squares of the windows. Remus keeps what he has neat – always has, thinks James – though it looks a little ridiculous to have the single chair tucked snug against the small table, to have the three chipped teacups lined up in the cabinet, to have the extra empty bedroom still scrubbed of dust and the floors all swept.

"Tea?" asks Remus.

"If you've got it," says James, and pushes off from the doorway, loitering by the refrigerator.

"Course," says Remus, with a small shoulder shrug. He's at the stove, back turned, the white nape of his neck bared and bent. "Get yourself a mug?"

James does, rolling it between his palms, running the length of the smooth handle with his thumb when he watches Remus push up the sleeves of his jumper with his skinny wrist; he clears his throat when Remus snaps off the stove element and slides a slightly-burnt cheese toastie onto a plate.

"Milk's in the fridge, if you want it," says Remus, setting the kettle on.

Milk, yeah, thinks James, propping the fridge door open. Milk, half a hunk of cheese, and a fucking jar of marmalade.

"So what the hell are you living on, anyway?" he grimaces. "Christ."

"Would you like to critique my cupboards, too?" Remus pushes the sugar bowl into James's other hand, and James stands there like a culprit, the robber caught with his trousers at his ankles. "Or the pantry?"

"Well. Can't imagine you've got much to speak of there either," James grins.

"Fuck you, Potter," Remus laughs, head bent, fingers picking up crumbs from his plate.

"So _polite_ ," he murmurs to the sugar bowl, like a secret, and it's a little like it used to be, after all. "That time of the month and all hell breaks loose in that wee furry head, eh?"

"Mm," says Remus, and there is something heavy in his throat, something awkward in the pause between them – the sweeping realization that there is a gaping hunk of solving material missing from the equation.

"So, I imagine you're rather cross," says James. "If you – "

"I'm not cross," Remus cuts him off, fingers tightening on the plate; James sees him rock back onto his heels, lean into the solid backing of the kitchen counter. "That's ridiculous."

"Right," snorts James. "It's not as if we haven't, you know, _shown up_ in two months."

"James – "

"It isn't as if we've simply _skived_ off every moon since Christmas and left you to rot in your fucking horrid flat with a morsel of 'oh, sorry mate, just got things to do' and don't you dare tell me that pretty little bit of new scar on your neck isn't our fault, Lupin, because you _well_ know where you'd like to tell me to shove it, _don't you_."

The kettle squeals, an automobile outside skids on the ice, tires screeching round the corner, and Remus's hand goes to his collar.

James heaves a sigh, chest tight, and shoves the sugar bowl and mug onto the tiny table, hooking the kettle with a hand and lifting it from the stove.

"It's not that," says Remus, when James has his back turned. "I never _encouraged_ it, but you - "

James fingers the sugar spoon. Ah, the good old English mate it is, he sighs. Thank god for teaspoons and moments where the Earl Grey's just _got_ to be steeped. Thank god for cheese toasties in the pan so you've got _something_ to say, even if it's _you're burning it, mate_ rather than _we've fucked it up._

"I know," he says.

"He says you told him he should probably find his own place," says Remus. "That he should move out, probably."

"Sirius?" Yes, thinks James, I probably did tell him, probably. "He's a big boy, Lupin," he says, instead. "He's able to figure it out for himself."

"I don't care what kind of _boy_ he was, he was paying half the rent!" snaps Remus.

"Right, because that's all you think about, money, fucking money, and not a whit of it's got to do with how goddamned miserable you are, and how _necessary_ we all seem to think it is, when it's – "

"I'm not – "

"Eat your fucking sandwich, Lupin," James snaps, and shoves the sugar spoon back into the bowl. Mug firmly between both hands, he has the courage to turn and look the damaged distance full in the face.

"If it weren't a waste," says Remus. "I'd rather dump it down your trousers instead."

And it's _well done Potter_ , thinks James. Well done, you horrid creature, you miserable little man, look at the jokes we have to make now. He wants to mumble something about grease stains and the molding of the cheese in the refrigerator, and something about Remus's skinny frame and the way he probably can't keep any heat in his body with all that _necessity_ of friendship in the way: distance, registry tattoos for any number of dark creatures, no invitations to Harry's last birthday, and an absent pack of brothers with empty hands and a knack for emptying bedrooms. But oh no, thinks James, wouldn't that just be too _cruel_.

"Are you," he says, instead. "Lonely?"

"Oh, no. I'm a big boy, Potter," murmurs Remus Lupin, with every little bit of irony the world has to offer set at his teeth.

"Ha ha," says James, into his teacup. "Bloody wonderful."

"It's almost," says Remus, and the sun answers with a dip below the rooftops. "Almost time. I'm going to get ready." And Remus puts the unfinished toastie down, nudges the plate towards the sink with a white knuckle. "Go ahead and eat it, if you're hungry."

"You'll be in – "

"The bedroom," says Remus, hands in his pockets, looking naked and half-transformed already, with the shadows chasing the grooves of his lips, the set curves of his eyes and cheeks and hollows of his throat. "The password hasn't changed, or anything."

Ah, thinks James, well. He hears the click of the lock down the corridor, and then he sits down at the table and finishes his tea and half of the cold cheese toastie. _Shame on us._

* * *

Remus sits naked on the edge of the bed and James feels the tingling in the sweaty creases of his palms that mean his body recognizes the places where the thrill of last-minute escapes and harrowing, caged cries of animals begins. Here, with their skin like russet marble bared, necessary, to each other, and their eyes black with shadows. Here with Remus's body bent to his own knees, with his back bubbling with the approach of night. Here, in this in rising circle of tension, where the sky is like a smeared wound, lit from the inside out and the threat of death is less than the threat of not speaking, _now_.

"It's not that we don't want to," whispers James.

Remus howls; it ruptures his belly and spine, and splits the sunset in two.

* * *

In the morning, Remus's skin has the sheen of new soap, pale lye and drained of heat. There is a flaky-brown scab on the side of his bent knee, a fresh pink line of scrapes over his ribs. James sits in his jeans and his socks and his blurry vision, his aching head, with his back to the headboard, and watches the sun rise over the brick wall of the building next door. He watches Remus's body react to the humanity of its own limbs again, and he remembers the first time he saw that violent shudder and thought that he had never lived like an earthquake before, but that he suddenly knew it was all very possible. He touches Remus's arm; he thinks of the missing links again.

"Oh," says Remus, and his eyes are bright and unfocused. "What – "

"Deep breaths and count to ten or I'm putting you under again," says James, and the words are so familiar they actually _taste_ like the wood and dust and the fraying, thick air of the Shack, in November, when they were fifteen.

Remus closes his eyes, and – yes, thinks James, he's counting, breathing, and at least we were good for something, once.

"It's all right, mate," says James, and lets his palm curl around Remus's elbow; he can feel the gradually slowing pulse, the returning heat to his skin, the tremors that fade as the bones realize they've been knit back to each other, properly (if temporary).

So James makes tea and brings Remus water to drink, while the sun rises. Remus drifts in and out of the aching sleep of the wounded and recovering, and James repairs what he can; he finds bandages in the cabinet over the sink, and wraps Remus's side, his knee, washes the blood from under his fingernails. And after a while they sit, side by side, backs to the wood of the headboard and basking in the necessity of rest. There is a sluice of sunlight that leaves a slanted patch of yellow on Remus's closed door, and over James's belly. He finds his body lax, sated, fingers curling in the empty, happy space beside his hip where he knows Remus is still breathing.

"I don't think he wanted to leave," says James.

Remus shifts, pulls at a loose edge of the bandage at his knee. "You don't, mh?"

"No," says James. "Who would?"

Remus raises his face into the shaft of sun, and James's stomach does a guilty little flip. I suppose it would be harder still, he thinks, if I were where Sirius had been: that far burrowed into the wooly existence of Remus Lupin, the soft edges and the bony hips and the assurance of _need_ , after all.

"Not us," says James, hoarse because of the sunny-coloured dust floating in the air.

"Right," says Remus.

"Don't worry, mate," he says. "It'll even out, soon enough."

Remus nods; they empty out silent guarantee into lightening room, into the spring to follow, to the summer and autumn and the winter after that, even. They will not leave, they will be there, necessity or no, and they will fight common hollow promises and difficult decisions, thinks James, _just watch me_. And when Remus says thank you, thank you for coming, James can believe that the small space between their fingers - on the bedspread, between their hips – that it's bridged, and they are touching.


End file.
